Research

Understanding style formats is helpful when you are looking at a bibliography (list of sources) in an article or book and want to track down an item. Knowing the elements of a citation will tell you:

• if something is an article or a book,
• located in print or online,
• who wrote it,
• and when and where it was published.

Think of style or citation formats as a method of communication about the resources used for research. People from around the world can look at a citation and know where the resource came from, what it is, and can then track it down.

Career

You may never use MLA or APA in your career, but the practice of using a format as a method of communication is something that you will probably do every day as a professional in some form or another.

Recognizing types of resources based on a style format and knowing how to locate them is also a valuable and transferable skill. 

Citations direct readers to the source of information.

The following information...

Currently, the most influential factor for cocoa sustainability is believed to be the economic stability of cocoa farmers and their families and the profitability of their farms.

is from the following source...

Book Title: Chocolate and Health: Chemistry, Nutrition and Therapy 

Chapter: 2.6 Current View of Cocoa Sustainability

Page: 49 - 50

Authors: W Jeffrey Hurst and Philip K Wilson

Publication Year: 2015

Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry

Publisher Location: Cambridge, UK

Citation for References (APA)  

Hurst, W. J., & Wilson, P. K. (2015). Chocolate and health: Chemistry, nutrition and therapy. Cambridge, UK: Royal Society of Chemistry.

Citation for Works Cited (MLA)

Hurst, W Jeffrey, and Philip K. Wilson. Chocolate and Health: Chemistry, Nutrition and Therapy. Cambridge, UK: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2015.

You must cite the source of your information whenever you

• quote something,
• paraphrase something, or
• use ideas or information that you learned of from another source.

To give credit

Citations give credit to the person who created the information originally.

To share your sources with your readers

Citations allow you and your readers to partake in the scholarly conversation about your topic.

By showing where you found your information, you allow your readers to go look at the information themselves, make their own interpretation of it, and then join back in the conversation and add to or refine what you have already written.

To strengthen your argument

Providing citations is also a way of being transparent which adds credibility to your argument.

If you say something that is based on your own opinion, that is fine, but does not add much credibility.

If you can show why you think something and where you found the evidence to make you think something and show others where they can also go look at the evidence and draw their own conclusion, this adds credibility to what you are saying.